Tick mattress

A tick mattress, bed tick or tick is a large bag made of strong, stiff, tightly-woven material (ticking). This is then filled to make a mattress, with material such as straw, chaff, horsehair, coarse wool or down feathers,^{: 674-5 vol1} and less commonly, leaves, grass, reeds, bracken, or seaweed. The whole stuffed mattress may also, more loosely, be called a tick. The tick mattress may then be sewn through to hold the filling in place, or the unsecured filling could be shaken and smoothed as the beds were aired each morning. A straw-filled bed tick is called a paillasse, palliasse, or pallet, and these terms may also be used for bed ticks with other fillings. A tick filled with flock (loose, unspun fibers, traditionally of cotton or wool) is called a flockbed. A feather-filled tick is called a featherbed, and a down-filled one a downbed; these can also be used above the sleeper, as a duvet.

A tick mattress (or a pile of such tick mattresses, softest topmost, and the sheets, bedcovers, and pillows), was what Europeans traditionally called a "bed". The bedframe, when present, supported the bed, but was not considered part of it.^{: 674-5 vol1}